Entering South Africa is part of our global expansion strategy as we continue to solidify our presence in Southern Africa.
Our South African story
We began in 1947 as The South African Bank of Athens, to serve the Greek expat community – a business bank supporting SMEs.
In 2018, Bank of Athens concluded a deal with AFGRI, Fairfax Capital and the PIC/GEPF to acquire the majority of the Bank’s shares. In line with the shareholders’ vision, the Bank realigned its strategy to focus on South Africa’s food and agribusiness markets, from farming to food retail. The Bank rebranded and relaunched as Grobank, building on its business banking expertise and developing secondary agri-market skills and capabilities.
In 2020, Grobank entered a transaction with the Access Bank Group. Access Bank invested and acquired a controlling stake in Grobank and, in 2021, rebranded the business as Access Bank South Africa.
Our strategy expanded to align with the vision of becoming the gateway to Africa, and the world’s most respected African bank. Access Bank South Africa will not only build on our established strengths in business/SME banking, foreign exchange services and alliance banking but will launch new capabilities.
As we build our business, we continue to bring you new developments and offerings in personal banking, trade finance and corporate banking – as we enhance our existing offerings.
The Access Bank story
Almost two decades ago, Access Bank set out to change the face of banking in Nigeria.
Our goal was to uplift the African continent through what we called sustainable banking, showing individuals and businesses alike that ethical business is good business. We soon became the partner of choice for domestic and multinational corporates.
Some years before, another entrepreneur was building Diamond Bank, with a dream that went beyond banking. He responded to changing lifestyles by developing an outstanding technological capability and adopting a customer-first approach, growing quickly to become a leader in digital and mobile banking.
In April 2019, we came together to create Africa’s largest bank by customer base. A historic day for both banks, and a noteworthy step towards our shared vision of becoming the world’s most respected African bank.
We combined the very best of our two banks to aid the economic prosperity of Nigeria and bring financial inclusion to millions of people, through Access Bank.
